Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed herein relates generally to data storage systems in computer networks and, more particularly, to improvements to storage management systems that allocate use of storage devices for performing storage operations.
There are many different computing architectures for storing electronic data. Individual computers typically store electronic data in volatile storage devices such as Random Access Memory (RAM) and one or more nonvolatile storage devices such as hard drives, tape drives, or optical disks, that form a part of or are directly connectable to the individual computer. In a network of computers such as a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN), storage of electronic data is typically accomplished via servers or storage devices accessible via the network. A storage device may be, for example, any device capable of storing and retrieving electronic data in a computer network, for example, a storage device in a computing device, such as a general-purpose computing device, a server, a legacy server, production server, a storage device used to perform a local storage operation, a storage library, tape drives, optical libraries, Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), CD-ROM jukeboxes, or other storage devices. Such storage devices may be used to perform a storage operation using removable media, such as tapes, disks, or other media. Removable media is widely utilized in performing storage operations in storage devices. In general, only one media item may be placed in a storage device storage drive for use in a storage operation. If a storage device has only one storage drive, any storage operations performed in the storage drive may cause the storage device to be unavailable for other uses. In addition, if the storage device has only one storage drive, and more than one media item may be required to perform a storage operation, a second media item may be used to replace a first media item in the storage drive. In this scenario, without a robotic arm or a person to manually swap tapes between drives, the storage operation could not be performed once the first media item has been utilized. This may cause inefficiencies in running common storage operations.